Launch Center Pro
Apple offers quite a few shortcuts that let you switch between apps and access different actions on your iPad, but if you have used the tablet for more than a few months, you might have too many apps that can do a vast number of things. When things get cluttered, getting things done on the iPad can become time-consuming and tedious. Launch Center Pro makes your life easier by allowing you to create quick shortcuts to all sorts of features that are usually buried deep within the apps. If you like customizing and personalizing your iPad, this is the best non-jailbreak app around. Here is a list of actions that it allows you to create shortcuts for.
CloudOn
We may live in the post-PC world, but we are still most familiar with Microsoft Office tools. Unfortunately, Apple devices do not have full support for editing different Microsoft Office documents. CloudOn lets you add Adobe Reader and Microsoft Office to your iPad through Cloud Computing; through this app you can easily edit all your documents on the Cloud and even share them via any of your other apps.
iCabMobile
Most iPad owners get used to the Safari browser: it doesn’t offer a superlative browsing experience, but it does a fairly decent job, but there are lots of things it cannot do. For instance, it doesn’t allow you to open tabs in foreground. With iCabMobile, you have a lot more control over the browser – you can arrange tabs the way you want, dd and activate URL-based filters, organize and store bookmarks, choose a full-screen mode, protect the browser with a password, configure multi-touch gestures, and do dozens of other specific tasks that are not possible with the built-in browser.
GoToMyPC
Using this app, you can access your PC or Mac from any location, allowing you to control your PC remotely and transform your tablet into a powerful workspace. While there are several other apps that offer similar services, GoToMyPC has the simplest interface, and it is easy to set up, and even offers gesture shortcuts that make your task easier.
Camera Awesome
The iPad is perfect for viewing images, but it is less-than-perfect as a camera. There are several advantages of using the iPad as a camera, however, and this app makes the most of it. It exploits iPad’s larger screen to simplify the task of taking snaps as well as editing photos. The best part of the Camera Awesome app is its customized set of controls that make it a lot easier for users to click pictures without wobbling. On top of that, there are several cool image editing and sharing features that improve the camera experience of iPad exponentially.
Cracked.com
Cracked.com is one of the funniest websites on the Internet. If you are one of the millions of people who visit this website on a regular basis, it may be a good idea to the get the app on your iPad. Even if you have never heard of this website, but love funny stuff on Internet, this is one app that will keep you laughing for a long, long time.
Fan (previously Fanhattan)
Onavo Extend
It’s very easy to spend a lot of time watching videos, browsing images, video chatting, playing online games and downloading stuff on your iPad. All these, and other Internet-centric activities, can drive up your data usage and cost you a pretty penny. Onavo Extend works with a proxy compression cloud service to drastically reduce the amount of data consumed by your device. Its compression feature doest take some of the sheen off the images, but then, it can extend your data plan by a whopping 500%!
Apps Gone Free
Avid app hunters know about this one, but most iPad users are not aware of it. If you want to install high-quality and powerful apps in your iPad without paying any money, this is the app you want to download first. As the name suggest, Apps Gone Free brings the information about paid apps that you can download for free (or cheaply) owing to a promotional offer. In order to gain popularity, many apps reduce their price or offer free versions, and this app gives expert advice on the best apps that are free or cheap for just a short period of time.
Comic Flow
Touted as the only open-source comic reader, this is a serious, iPad-only app that doesn’t have many bells and whistles but allows you to sync your comic using USB and iTunes. It has an intuitive and clutter-free interface, and it lets you sort your comics by series, name, date and status. The best thing about this app is that it offers a plain experience that lets you focus on reading comics. Comic Flow supports all formats, has the ability to handle large collections, and doesn’t need to pre-process the comics before you can start reading them.
Pulse
Pulse is one of the more beautiful newsreaders out there. It simplifies the task of organizing new stories, sharing them and discovering more place to find the kind of content you like. You can add thousands to sources through the app, including RSS and social networks, and you can save stories in Pulse to read offline. The syncing feature enables you to access the same feature on your all your Apple devices.
Zite
There are several personalized magazine apps out there, but Zite offers a better or comparable experience to most, and it’s free. This app keeps close tabs on what you like to read, learns from your choices, and does a very good job of suggesting the best stories, magazines and articles for you. In addition to using the thumbs-up and thumbs-down feature, you can also let the app access and learn from your social accounts and also from your Pocket account. What sets this app apart from most competitors is its ability to deliver stories of your taste in a format you like.
The Act
This app is on the list because it’s a unique game that stands at the intersection of role playing game, cartoon, and drama. It is one of the most beautiful games for iPad, but as it is rather unconventional, it has not been able to make a big splash on the iTunes Store. The gameplay is not too challenging, but it is fun. You control the emotions and actions of the game’s protagonist and make him interact in a certain way with other game characters.
Soundrop
This minimalist game/music app generated a lot of buzz when it was launched, but it did not stay in the public eye for a long time. If you want to be playful and creative using your iPad, this is an app you must download. Soundrop is simple: you draw lines after dropping balls, thus producing melodies based on the angle and length of lines. If you play it right, you can create music instead of random sounds, which is the real beauty of the game.
Letterpress
There are tons of word games for the iPad, and quite a few of them are awesome. Letterpress is one such game that has not found as much popularity as it should have. The game uses an uncluttered, minimalist design, and it has simple controls. It is an asynchronous multiplayer game, and the objective is to spell words using a five-by-five grid of random letters. But that is just the starter: what makes it way cooler than a general word game is the combination of word skills with strategy – you can arrange the words to trap your opponent and do several non-word-game things!
Life is Magic
This is probably the most innovative game for the iPhone or iPad. Life is Magic is a location-based fantasy that turns the real world around you into a world filled with dungeons, treasures and fights. You can compete with other players, choose between different character types, and compete against real players for dominating real locations. The most amazing thing about this game is that it the magical world in the game meshes neatly with your actual physical surroundings!
Snapguide
The Internet has made us all DIY fans, but if you have looked for guides on the web, you know that most of them have too much fluff and too little value. Snapguide is based on a very simply concept – sharing how-to guides using only images or videos and captions. So, if you want to find out how to perform a certain activity, you can simply open the app and see a step-by-step slide or a video.
Garageband
This is one-of-a-kind app that has spawned a number of copycats, none of which can offer as much as it does. Garageband has the power to turn your iPad into a recording studio equipped with all sorts of music instruments, including piano, guitar, and drums. You can play dozens of instruments by touching the image of the instrument on your iPad screen. The app replicates real-world music experience really well, and by using this app, you can make the kind of digital sounds that you can never make on real instruments. Not only can this app be used for fun, it can actually be used for composing music.
Things
This app is a little pricey, but the features and functionalities it offers make it a must-have. Things, as the name indicates, lets you manage all the small and big things in your life. It is a fast app that helps you organize your day, assign different levels of focus and importance to tasks, create different categories of tasks, use tags to assign priority and contexts, tap in new ideas any time create repeating tasks, review completed tasks, and almost anything else that you may need to organize your work and life.
Visual Budget Expense Tracking
There are several iPad apps that help you manage money, and they all do a decent job, but Visual Budget is simpler to use and offers more features and facilities than similar apps. This app can turn your iPad into a machine to analyze your (and anybody else’s) accounts. You can manage several accounts that same time, and create categories and create groups for different accounts. It tracks expenses, income and also allows users to define and mark a budget plan.
1Password
Perhaps you already have this app in your iPad, but it had to be included here because too many people have dozens of accounts and still do not use a password manager. With 1Password, you need to remember only one password, i.e., the master password for the app itself. All your other passwords will be stored inside the app and you can automatically open any website without filling any forms twice. The app has rock-solid security features (including military grade 256 bit encryption), allows you to generate powerful passwords, and it auto-locks and protects your data in case your mobile is stolen. These apps are enough to make your iPad more useful, efficient and fun, but there are still several apps out there that are not as popular as they should be. Do you use a relatively lesser-known iPad apps that offer something special to the general iPad user? Please share your favorites in the comments below. Featured photo credit: Henry Ascroft via unsplash.com
